Comment by Aulig | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Aulig | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, myopia is not complicated (Kepler pretty much had it right in 1604 already). There's countless studies showing that axial length (eyeball length) changes in both directions, where elongation increases myopia. How do you change it? You get defocus (blur) which makes the eye adjust in the direction to reduce the blur.

Practically: use weaker (around 1.5 diopters) or no glasses during close-up work (reading, computer work, smartphones) and your regular or .25D weaker glasses for distance vision. Always use your full strength glasses for driving and safety critical activities.

You can expect around a .75D decrease in myopia per year. Personally, I started with around -5.5D and am now (1.5 years later) at -2.5D.

Obviously I didn't come up with this myself, there's a huge group over at https://endmyopia.org

Don't get put off by the sarcastic tone of the website. Look into the studies regarding axial length, pseudomyopia and lens induced myopia if you'd like. You can find plenty of studies linked as well as the practical steps on endmyopia. Note: You don't have to buy the guy's courses, just read his blog and free email guide.

Hard to believe after all these years EndMyopia is not only being promoted on HN, but is consistently one of the most upvoted things on the subject. I figured the pros here would slice and dice and find issues with the research and recommendations and explain in depth why it’s snake oil (if it is), but it’s been a fairly forgiving topic.

It's bullshit because there are a ton of reasons why you would need corrective vision. This will work for a small subset but for most will not. And for those who it does help, they'll still need glasses. It's pointless.

It's more likely that it works for a large majority. If you were born myopic or had an accident or something similar, yea it most likely wont work for you. But most myopes do not fall in those categories. I'm very open to hearing your arguments backing up your statement though.

My arguments are that if that were the case, we'd already be doing it. I work in the optical industry. To suggest that opthalmologists just haven't figured this out yet is just pants on head retarded, sorry.

We live in a world where not long ago smoking was considered fine by doctors. Where fat is demonized on nutrition labels while obesity surges. Where leaded gasoline was banned in gas not that long ago. Where a dozen diseases are increasingly prevalent and we have no idea why. To suggest that medicine hasn't figured something out is completely sensible. It can be argued that mRNA vaccine breakthroughs might not have happened without COVID, before that we didn't have it figured out. How many ophthalmologists are doing research, and how many are doing their job and going home because research doesn't pay? In every age many are convinced we've reached the pinnacle of science and have everything figured out, and that is pants on head retarded.

There's just no evidence for it. It's that fucking simple.

No evidence for what? Almost everything related to endmyopia is proven, aside from the whole thing put together.

The main thing, axial length reduction through undercorrection, has been shown in plenty of animals and humans.

I think what the parent is trying to say is that we have studies that show how myopia can be induced. I think EndMyopia gives examples in baby chickens or some such. But I’ve yet personally not come across a vetted study that shows reversal of myopia. And I support EndMyopia/Hormesis Theory as I’ve applied some of the ideas to help my one weaker eye get a bit sharper over time.

I understand there’s an industry that wants to be paid for prescription glasses and lenses and whatnot, and that can throw a wrench and it does into the whole thing - see the Sugar vs Fat vs Whatever industry battle. But a little would go a long way.

Come on, it hasn't been proven on humans.

Here are 3 studies that have shown axial length change in humans:

https://iovs.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2772368

https://iovs.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2126435

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjourn...

I only checked your first article, and you're not wrong that axial length change was observed in humans. But it makes the opposite point of what you hope. The myopic eyes only grew longer when subjected to any type of blur.

"In addition, in myopes, calculated defocus caused longer eyes (+8.4 ± 9.0 µm, P = 0.001). Strikingly, myopic eyes became also longer with positive defocus (+9.1 ± 11.2 µm, P = 0.02)."

Please check out the other articles too or read some more of that article - they point out that their findings are not the norm and speculate as to why that could be. I suspect it's because they used too much defocus (you wouldn't be able to read anything with the amount of defocus they're using, so completely impractical for real life) - that has led to axial elongation in many other studies too.

There was some good discussion with experts here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31360653

This probably works for most people. But I've used 2-diopter weak glasses for the last 40 years, whenever I'm indoors. I think it helped slow the worsening of progression of my nearsightedness, but didn't stop it and certainly didn't reverse it.

Congrats! It's already good to stagnate so you dont get into high myope territory, which comes with lots of risks.

Apart from that I'm positive you could make improvements. You'd need to continuously measure your eyesight and adjust your glasses accordingly, otherwise you might undo your improvements by being overcorrected.

Is there a single step-by-step guide that shows what to do?

All I can find on that (frankly quite awful) site are ways to sign up to a course by email, lots of podcast episodes, testimonials for people that improved their eyesight, and endless photos of what I assume is the site's creator. The "Guides" page doesn't actually have any guides, just more of the same.

From what I can tell, the guy really wants to sell you a course, but at the same time, they are all "sold out".

His free 7 day email guide is a good introduction imo (if i remember right, it was 1.5 years ago for me after all). You might also prefer the wiki, which is more seriously written: https://wiki.endmyopia.org/wiki/EndMyopia_Wiki

The red flag for me about how well this all works is that the only way to find out how is to pay money. As you noted, the site itself doesn't inspire confidence either.

I did not pay anything, nor do I gain anything from promoting Jake's work. I do it because it works so well and once found it the same way - from a comment on HN.

> Practically: use weaker (around 1.5 diopters)

This is what optometrists in Asia do, except in the West there is always a cultural tendency to "overprescribe"

That's outdated advice popular among doctors like 30 years ago. No credible specialist would tell you to wear weaker glasses in 2022.

I agree that most optometrist won't advise you to do this. However, I don't see that as a good thing: "Contrarily, academics felt failure to discuss myopia control or refer a progressive myope for myopia control treatment was verging on negligent..."

https://hrbopenresearch.org/articles/2-30

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